Question

what is the best way to implement switches [ex: -m] for shell scripts?
I can do it via the switch case statement. But i am curious to know is there any other standard way to get all the arguments into a variable via a switch.
Ex:
-m A1 A2 -c c1 c2

So that,
M[] can take -m
and C[] can all take -c

Answer 1

The best known way is to use getopts, see http://wiki.bash-hackers.org/howto/getopts_tutorial

An example :

#!/bin/bash

while getopts ":a" opt; do
  case $opt in
    a)
      echo "-a was triggered!" >&2
      ;;
    \?)
      echo "Invalid option: -$OPTARG" >&2
      ;;
  esac
done